Chapter 4: Demons

So Zig is gonna try to turn her ball black. I think it would be depressing, but then, her life already is (or maybe just was, but I think she likes black and isn't gonna give that up for awhile) so… Well, here's the story.

She was talking to Lili, looking from Lili's perspective.

Actually, she was just listening to Lili. Sometimes she'd say something, but Lili was the one actually talking.

"So then I pulled out and took back my psychoportal, which of course I could actually do at that point because he was so terrified…"

"Wait – you have your own psychoportal?"

"Yeah. It's pretty. It has a daisy on it."

"So you could, like, go into my mind and do whatever you wanted?"

"No. Your protections are too strong."

"Wow. I didn't know I was so powerful."

"Teleporters are usually pretty powerful. And people who can see the future. But I can't do that. Can you?"

"No. Otherwise I might have run away sooner. But, if you went into my mind, you'd be able to fight my demons?"

"Yeah, I guess. I actually offer that as a service. People pay me for it. I also clean out cobwebs, collect figments, sort baggage, all that stuff… for a price, of course."

"What would it cost me?"

"To go into your mind and get all the collectibles? Nothing. You're a friend."

"I don't want you to take that stuff. That's mine, and I want to see what it is. I want you to help me fight my demons. Could we ask Sasha Nein if that's possible?"

"I know it is. It's hard, though. I forget what goes first: me going to your mind, or you going to your mind."

"Well, let's ask him. It can't hurt to ask."

They went to Sasha's secret underground lab to ask him. He was, of course, not expecting them to come in just as he was pouring a psitanium solution into another mixture of chemicals, (they could possibly explode, so he was ready to shield it) so the kids watched him from the stairs a couple landings above him.

They watched as the mixture bubbled through the shield.

"Erfolg! Ich hab es getan!"

He sounded excited. They went down to the bottom step (the chemicals had spread that far across the floor) and watched as Sasha wrote down a bunch of stuff as quickly as he could.

Finally, as he was cleaning up the mess (by hand) he saw the two girls.

"What are you two doing here! This is a highly dangerous area. Didn't you see the signs?"

"Let's just say for now that I can't read German."

"But you took that class –"

"Let's just say for now that I don't know any German at all, Sasha!"

"Okay, okay. Will you help me clean this up?"

"No. It looks icky."

Then Zig piped in with, "I want to! It looks slimy!"

"Thank you. So, why are you two here?"

"We want to fight Zig's demons together. She knows how, but… well, she hasn't had the best life, and she's afraid to go in her mind. We want to use the Brain Tumbler so that she and I can be in her mind at the same time, because she has the hatred and she really wants to, and I'm experienced. You have no idea how much I can charge to get rid of demons and collectibles in people's minds."

"What do they teach children these days?"

"Fortunately, not third or forth year German!"

"Ugh. I guess… but it's a very complex operation. You might not be able to do it."

"Listen. I make money to fight demons and censors and stuff. I know how to do this. It'll be easy. The only hard part will be if her mind has a lot of clairvoyance."

"Uh, why? What's my mind got to do with your abilities?"

"Well, some people have problems with shielding or invisibility or that sort of thing, and I have this thing where I can't maintain clairvoyance for too long."

"Oh. That might actually be a realistic fear."

"Exactly."

"If it is like that, I'll try to get you a flashlight or something."

"Actually, maybe if I used my levi-ball… I could make it white… It's pretty bright."

"Not in that sort of place, it wouldn't be."

Zig and Sasha were finally done cleaning up the chemical mess.

"Okay. So, you both want to be in Zig's mind?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Zig, step up to the Brain Tumbler. Lili, you'll need to borrow my psychoportal to –"

"No, I actually have one of my own now."

"Oh. They give them to ten-year-olds now? What is the world coming to?"

"Uh… Are you sure you had enough coffee this morning, Sasha? You're acting weird."

"Lili…"

"Okay, okay! Let's get going!"

… And that's when the world exploded.

No more story.

Actually, yeah, you do get to read more of the story, I just wanted to say it. Hilarious, huh?

So, let's just go on as though nothing happened.

Zig stepped up to the Brain Tumbler and closed her eyes. Sasha turned it on, and a mental projection of her appeared in her collective unconscious.

Meanwhile, Lili had thrown her psychoportal onto Zig's forehead, and a couple seconds later, she projected into Zig's Collective Unconscious.

"Okay, I'd never thought my mind looked like this."

"It doesn't. This is your Collective Unconscious. All those doors are your potential for going into peoples' minds. If you need some extra space when you have more experience, you can close the doors, but then you can't go back. I think that door's yours, that black one over there. I think it's open a crack…"

They jogged over to the only black door in Zig's Collective Unconscious. It was a little bit open. They opened it all the way and walked through into…

…Complete and utter darkness. Zig focused her clairvoyance on the nearest object, a little doll she'd had when she was younger.

She heard Lili's voice and turned to her.

"Zig? I can't see. Where are we? I don't know if I should be telling you now, but I'm a little bit afraid of the dark. Zig?"

Zig was, of course, so used to using and switching her clairvoyance that she hadn't even noticed that she was using it.

"Just use clairvoyance on the doll. It's just like this one I had when I was five. Isn't this… Uh-oh."

"What uh-oh? Zig, I can't use clairvoyance for long! Where the heck am I?"

"You're right in the way of one of my personal demons. What do I do now!"

The demon in question was a blown-out-of-proportion image of her father, who she only saw as bad because he'd divorced her mother and left Zig to deal with the woman on her own.

"Shoot it, or set it on fire, or kill it however you can!"

"But I don't know how!"

"THEN TRY SOMETHING!"

"Okay, jeez."

Shots bounced off. Fire wouldn't light. Hitting him didn't do much damage. Finally, she tried TKing him into the wall. She only had to do that a couple of times, and he died.

"Okay, he's gone."

"Maybe if I get enough stuff in here, I can get an upgrade and I'll be able to hold my clairvoyance for longer."

"Whatever."

"That's seriously something I should try. If you want me to, of course."

"I don't care."

"Okay. Thanks. I think I'm not good at clairvoyance because I don't like to see things from other peoples' perspectives. Maybe I should look into that."

"Maybe you should shut up now. Come on. While there isn't a threat, I'll hold your hand and guide you through. We can – Ugh! What are those!"

"What? What are what?"

"Little guys with big heads in suits with "no" symbol stamps and black hats."

"They're censors. You should be able to shoot them down in two shots, unless they're those really freaky ones. These ones have skinny arms, right?"

"Yeah."

"Shoot 'em."

Zig shot them down, made easier by the fact that for every shot she made, it could bounce and hit up to twelve people. Or "censors," or whatever.

"Okay, they're gone."

"Okay. Apparently, you've never been in anyone's mind before, so here's the basic monster-briefing. Censors in blue suits will stamp you. Censors who are so big they've broken their blue suits will clap you no matter whether you're hitting them or not, so you should run away and shoot them from far away. Censors in brown suits are smart, and they'll shoot at you. Little guys with big, orangey-yellow heads will explode if you get near them, and it'll hurt you if you aren't more than about three or four feet away from them. You should either shoot them, or let them come up to you, then run away before they explode. That's pretty much it. You can do just about anything to a censor. You can hit it, shoot it, set it on fire if you're far enough away that it won't hurt you… Baisically, anything. Oh, and the mini censors usually come in swarms, so just jump and palm-bomb.

"Glad to know there's that much stuff that's out to get me."

"No, they're out to get me. They're out to get everyone except for you. They're your little minions. I've got mine killing my demons as soon as they form. They've only missed a couple so far."

"Okay… So, could I get mine to go off and kill my demons?"

"No, I'm too close to you. Their first instinct is to kill anything and everything except for their creator. Heck, sometimes they even turn on their creator. But anyways, they'd keep trying to kill me instead of the monster. Whoa!"

"Sorry. Rock. So, how do you like your first five minutes of being blind?"

"Not that fun, surprisingly enough. I think it's amazing, how you can get around with just clairvoyance."

"Thanks. You're cool, too."

"Yeah, but a lot of people are afraid of me."

"And you're sure you don't need your eyes checked? I'm the goth-girl from Hell."

"No, you aren't. You're nice."

Suddenly, they heard Sasha's voice coming from the air around them. "Girls, I'm pulling you out of there. There's been an emergency up at the main lodge. I'm going to lock the doors to keep you safe."

Lili found herself sitting on the ground, just as she had been when she went into Zig's mind.

Zig was standing, but when she came out of her mind, she stumbled away from the Brain Tumbler.

"Sasha, why the heck did you do that! We might have been able to fight another demon!"

"There has been a psychic emergency. Specifically, the Main Lodge is on fire. I have to go now, but don't worry – the GPC is 100 fireproof. I made sure of it, just in case."

"I know how to fight psychic fires, Sasha. Dad taught me when I was little and my sister kept flaring up."

"No. I can't let you, Lili. I could lose my job if your father found out. Plus, Agent Vodello would kill me."

"You always think she's gonna kill you. And my dad would do way worse than that. I can keep secrets from him, though. He doesn't think I can, but I have tons of stuff he could never find. Just go, though, Sasha. Cruller and Milla won't be able to hold it for too long. I'll get all the fire extinguishers from around camp."

"Okay. Thank you, Lili."

He jumped down the tree stump (did anything ever get more obvious than that?) in his lab. Lili disappeared (there was a "pop" sound when air rushed to fill the empty space) and, most likely, reappeared somewhere else. Zig just stayed in Sasha's lab, thinking about how screwed-up her mind was.

To FluffleNeCharka: Yeah, I know Zig's pretty stereotypical, except for the blindness and psychicness. But in this chapter, you see that she's happy sometimes. Specifically, when she isn't thinking about depressing things. Having listened to my two friends argue about how the other person has no problems, I have concluded that depressed people want pity, which is the only reason why they talk about their depression. They kept saying why the other person didn't have any problems, and how they had more problems that the other person knows nothing about them. And then my other friend kept trying to say she understood… Depression is an endless black hole that is impossible not to think about, but that can only be cured by not thinking about it.

For everyone else, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Zig's mind is, most baisically, black with a couple long white stripes on the walls that cross a couple times. But you can only see the stripes (which also define where the floor and walls are) by using clairvoyance on the random objects scattered throughout the area. I assume she has a decent number of demons, too, as seen in Rescue. Really, you should read it. I think you might understand a little more about Zig if you read this first though.